In a previous article, I referred to
the ‘coincidence’ that the modern art currents emerged at the same time as
the spiraling of magic and the occult ‘sciences’ in the 19th century. The
apparently sporadic occurrence of cabalistic themes in literary works became
almost systematic as the Enlightenment approached, such as in the works of
Milton in the 17th century or in those of Goethe in the 18th century.

The Romanticism and the Symbolism of the 19th century, for example,
developed simultaneously to the escalating influence of magic and occult.
These movements were not just the fruit of the individual esoteric bent of a
Victor Hugo in France, a Guerra Junqueiro in Portugal or an Alvares de
Azevedo in Brazil. Nor were they simply a consequence of the occult
divagations of a Charles Baudelaire, a Eugenio de Castro or a Cruz e Souza.
Rather they represented a whole artistic and literary movement that derived
from the new impulse given to the Gnostic sects.

Several currents of modern art share
with Socialism the same political goal of a classless society and the
utopist ideal of implanting a chiliast kingdom on earth. This shared end
indicates a common doctrinal background and cult, which they named
Transcendent Pantheism. This supposed creed of magic and occult inspired
religious syncretism, which serves to trigger Socialism. As we know
Socialism - or Social Pantheism - always follows Religious Pantheism, which
is connected to the Gnostic thinking that has infected almost all the
heresies since the Apostolic Age.

Gaugin explored pagan magic and rituals in the Polynesia Islands

While, for a Catholic, art is linked to an ideal of elevation and beauty,
for a partisan of these modern currents, art is something different.
Artistic skill and talent become means to disseminate shadowy mysteries and
to impose social domination.

It was his involvement in magic and false mysticism that led Gauguin to the
French Polynesia Islands in the South Pacific to learn native ritual and
witchcraft. Similar hermetic influences generated the birth of the
pre-Raphaelist Brotherhood movement in England, whose leader was poet and
painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His works were heavily imbued with the
occult.

Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dadaism, Suprematism, Surrealism, Orphism,
Abstractionism, Concretism – these are some of the different names assumed
by this artistic kabala in the 20th century.

An effort to dominate others

We can better understand this subversion in art by showing how the
Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa expounded its fundamental principles. In his
work Notes for a Non-Aristotelian Aesthetics, he sought an aesthetics
based on force and energy, not on truth and beauty. He pretends that since
art is a social phenomenon, it “is above all an effort to dominate others.”

Fernando Pessoa, right, met his mentor Aleister Crowley once in
Lisbon in 1930

Pessoa explains that while Aristotelian art influences by convincing, modern
art dominates by subjugating. He continues: “The first, Aristotelian
art, bases itself on the concept of beauty because it wants to make what
pleases; it bases itself on intelligence because it wants to make what is
comprehensible. The second, modern art, is based on feeling, which is
specific and personal. It is through this personal feeling that we dominate;
otherwise, to dominate would be to lose one’s personality or, in other
words, to be dominated.”

Even before the Surrealists, Fernando Pessoa was already composing his
poetry in a state of trance. He became a medium and joined Spiritism. He was
initiated in theosophy by Anne Besant and Madame Blavatsky and corresponded
with the famous warlock Aleister Crowley. (1) He claimed to discover in the
“holy” kabala “the source of all enlightenment and all esoteric philosophy.”

According to him, “Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Theosophy, Spiritism,
Occultism - everything leads to the same conclusion: the meaning of the
world, the explanation of life and of death itself belong to those initiated
into the mysteries of the Occult.” (2)

These notions of force and of social domination weld the alliance between
Futurism and Fascism, or the Socialism of the right. As a natural ally,
Mussolini gave Marinetti, the Italian initiator of the Futurist movement,
the title “Saint John Baptist of Fascism.”

Methods of modern art

What should we say about the methods of modern art? On this topic I offer
the opinion of French scholar Maurice Nadeau in his work The History of
Surrealism. Nadeau says:

“The methods of Surrealism constitute a true revolution. First, Surrealism
denies poetry by trying to surpass it. In poetry order is eliminated to
leave room for the spontaneous text, the pure and simple dictates of the
unconscious, the narrative of the dream. There is no artistic concern for
the quest of beauty. Importance is given to what is vile and undignified.

A psycho-transmitted painting by Jackson Pollock

"The spirit of the poet is what it is: havoc where sensations, sentiments,
desires and hopes intermingle and are expressed in the tumult - incoherence
through the spoken word and the pen. … By means of radical destruction, the
Surrealist poets constructed ‘new values’ in the [chaotic] atmosphere of the
world’s creation.

“This revolution in poetry became possible through an inner revolution in
man and his relations with the world. … The Marquis of Sade is the central
figure in its Pantheon. [Sade was a French poet and libertine who delivered
himself to the most corrupt sexual cruelties with others; from his name came
the term sadism.] Surrealism wants to destroy the whole legacy transmitted
by the family, morals and religion. French Communist poet Louis Aragon said:
‘Laws, morals and aesthetics were created to impose respect for the weak. It
is necessary to break free from what is weak. Our heroes are Viollette
Nozière who murdered her parents, the anonymous criminal, the deliberately
sacrilegious man’ (Les Aventures de Télémaque).

“The old traditional opposition between the bourgeois and the artist was
replaced by a violent antagonism between the revolutionary and the owner,
the slave and the boss. While the Surrealists started with a mystic idealism
of the predominance of spirit over matter, they ended in revolutionary
materialism.” (3)

These words of Nadeau about Surrealism could also be applied to other
currents of modern art and Gnostic movements in our contemporary history.

Demonic inspiration

What is this automatic painting, this abandonment to the instincts of the
unconscious, this quest for the monstrous, the negative and the
infra-natural?

What is this delivering of oneself to hallucinations and the madness that
led many of these ‘geniuses’ to commit suicide? What is this degradation
that imitates the barbarianism of the savage, the immature imagination of
the child or the grotesque improvisations of the clown?

All of this would seem to be nothing more than symptoms of delivering one’s
free will to the Devil…

Entering the underlying depths of this artistic kabala, Austrian scholar of
modern art Hans Seldmayr concurs: “I affirm that in no other period of the
history of man has demonic art dominated as it does in our days, to the
extent that the very image of man has become demonized.” (4)

I believe that this reference to modern art applied to its different schools
should be a criterion to help us appraise such works whenever we encounter
them.

1. Aleister Crowley was called “the filthiest and
more perverse English man” by a British judge. Asked about who he was, he
answered: “Before Hitler was, I am.” This Satanist, who died in December 2,
1947, founded two magazines in Berlin - Gnosis and Lucifer -
between 1920 and 1922. At his funeral his disciples sang over his grave the
Hymn to Pan composed by Crowley himself, the Hymn to Satan by
Carducci and the Collection for a Gnostic Mass, composed by Crowley
as well for his satanic temple in London. Fernando Pessoa translated the
Hymn to Pan into Portuguese. Cfr Alois Mager, Satan de nos jours.
2. See the chapters “Esoteric Initiation” and “The Holy Kabala” in J. Gaspar
Simões, Vida e Obra de Fernando Pessoa, 2 vols. 3. Maurice Nadeau,
Histoire du Surréalism 4. Hans Seldmayr, Art du demoniaque et demonie
de l’art. See also Filosofia dell’arte published by Centro
Internazionale di Studi Umanistici. On the Gnostic origin of modern music,
see Roman Vlad, Demonicità e dodecafonia.